2026 Winter Olympics

2026 Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics, officially the XXV Olympic Winter Games and also known as Milano-Cortina 2026, is an upcoming international multi-sport event scheduled to take place from 6 to 22 February 2026 in the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo. The joint bid from the two cities beat another joint bid from Swedish cities Stockholm–Åre by 47–34 votes at the 134th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 June 2019.
This will be the fourth Olympic Games hosted in Italy, which previously hosted the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo and the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. It will be the first Olympic Games officially featuring multiple host cities and will be the first Winter Olympics since Sarajevo 1984 where the opening and closing ceremonies will be held in different venues. Events will also take place in seven other north-northeastern Italian cities. The games will mark the 20th anniversary of the Winter Olympics in Turin and the 70th anniversary of the Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo. It will follow the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and precede the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
Bidding process
Host city selection
Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo were selected as the host cities on 24 June 2019 at the 134th IOC Session in Lausanne, Switzerland. The three Italian IOC members, Franco Carraro, Ivo Ferriani and Giovanni Malagò, and two Swedish IOC members, Gunilla Lindberg and Stefan Holm, were ineligible to vote as stated in the Olympic Charter.
Development and preparations
Speed Skating venue selection
During the bid process, the bidding Committee proposed that the speed skating events could be held at the existing Ice Rink Piné in Baselga di Pinè. However, despite the infrastructure being ready, it required a roof which impact and cost studies indicated would be very expensive, potentially breaking the budget. So instead, the Committee deliberated over three choices: building a temporary or a permanent ice rink in the pavilions of Fiera Milano, options that would require significant structural work, or move the events to the Oval Lingotto in the city of Turin which required no structural changes.The venue was constructed to host the speed skating during the 2006 Winter Olympics and after the games, hosted a variety of events such as exhibitions, fairs and conferences.The venue was also used at 2007 Winter Universiade to host the same sport and also will host the same event in 2025. In April 2023, it was estimated that the temporary ice rink in Fiera Milano would cost nearly €20 million, which would be paid for with private funds. The proposal to use Turin's Oval Lingotto received opposition from Milan-area officials, including Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala and officials from the host regions of Lombardy and Veneto. Fiera Milano was confirmed as the speed skating venue on 19 April 2023.
Ice sliding centre venue selection
During the bid process, the bidding Committee proposed to restore the iconic Eugenio Monti olympic track in Cortina, to be relaunched as a federal centre also for sledding and skeleton. The minimum cost of restoring the abandoned track was initially estimated at about €14 million, while in the official Milan-Cortina bid dossier the cost indicated was €100 million (similar to Cesana Pariol track costed €110 million for the Turin 2006 olympics). After initially forecasting an expenditure of €40-50 million, the Veneto Region allocated funding up to €85 million to build the new Olympic venues. An annual expenditure of €400,000 was also planned for the management of the facility, which would be open four months a year, to be settled through the establishment of €8 million fund. Due to the rising cost of construction materials, Luca Zaia announced in February 2023 that the restoring cost for the Cortina olympic track would be up to €120 million. Calling for tenders to award the work, no company came forward with a bid by the 31 July 2023 deadline; even after that, no company interested in carrying out the work could be found, both for economic reasons and because of the difficulty to complete all works before the start of the Olympics. Due to critical issues, costs and prohibitive times for the total renovation of Cortina track, the mayor of Innsbruck, Austria proposed to use the existing Igls olympic Sliding Centre. On 16 October 2023 the Italian National Olympic Committee announced that the track will not be rebuilt to host the Olympic Winter Games, and the sliding events of the 2026 Games will be held outside of Italy. However, the Italian government wants the sliding events to remain in Italy, so they recommended revamping the Cesana Pariol sliding track which hosted the events at Torino 2006.
Venues
The Milan-Cortina 2026 proposal involved many of the competition venues used during the 2013 Winter Universiade (Val di Fiemme), held in the province of Trentino and those infrastructures that were still in use that were also used in the 1956 Winter Olympics also held in Cortina D'Ampezzo. All the ice events with the exception of curling will be held in venues in Milan or their Metropolitan Region. The opening ceremony is scheduled to be held at the San Siro and the closing is to be held at the Verona Arena as the only event scheduled for Verona.
Milan Cluster
Stadio "Giuseppe Meazza", San Siro – Opening ceremony
Fiera Milano Rho – Ice hockey secondary venue, Speed skating, IBC and MBC
Mediolanum Forum, Assago – Figure skating, Short-track
PalaItalia Santa Giulia – Main Ice hockey venue
Piazza del Duomo – Medal Plaza and Live Site
Cortina d'Ampezzo Cluster
Olimpia delle Tofane Slope – alpine skiing
South Tyrol Arena, Antholz – biathlon
Stadio olimpico del ghiaccio – curling
Valtellina Cluster
Pista Stelvio, Bormio – alpine skiing & ski mountaineering.
Mottolino/Sitas-Tagliede/Carosello 3000, Livigno – snowboarding, freestyle skiing
Val di Fiemme Cluster
Stadio del salto "Giuseppe Dal Ben", Predazzo – ski jumping, Nordic combined
Centro del fondo "Fabio Canal", Lago di Tésero – cross-country skiing, Nordic combined
Verona
Verona Arena – closing ceremonies
Sports
Numbers in parentheses indicate the number of medal events contested in each discipline.
On 18 June 2021, the International Olympic Committee proposed that ski mountaineering be included as a sport for the 2026 Winter Olympics. The proposal was approved on 20 July.
On 24 June 2022, the IOC announced the final 2026 program. The alpine mixed team parallel event was removed, and the alpine combined event will now feature a couple (one man and one woman) from each team instead of one as proposed by the FIS. Along with the three ski mountaineering events, five new events have been added to the Olympic program in four sports that were already on the program. In this way, a total of 116 events in eight sports were scheduled.
Freestyle skiing: Men's and women's dual moguls.
Luge: Women's doubles. There was a reversal of the event from open to a exclusively men's event.
Ski jumping: Women's large hill individual
Ski mountaineering: Men's and Women's sprint, mixed relay
Skeleton: Mixed team
Marketing
Emblem
The official emblem for the 2026 Games was decided through an online poll that opened on 6 March 2021. The two candidate emblems were unveiled at the Sanremo Music Festival 2021 by former Italian Olympic gold medallists Federica Pellegrini and Alberto Tomba and are nicknamed "Dado" and "Futura". They were both designed by Landor Associates. The vote closed on 25 March 2021, with the winning emblem, the "Futura" emblem, was announced on 30 March 2021.
Theme song
During the Sanremo Music Festival 2022, two candidates for the official anthem of the event were presented, with a poll opening afterward. On 7 March 2022, "Fino all'alba" ("Until the dawn")—composed by the youth music group La Cittadina of the San Pietro Martire in Seveso, and performed during Sanremo by Arisa—was announced as the winner.
Corporate sponsorship
Broadcasting rights
Albania – RTSH
Asia – Infront Sports & Media
Australia – Nine Network
Austria – ORF
Belgium – RTBF, VRT
Brazil – Grupo Globo
Bulgaria – BNT
Canada – CBC/Radio-Canada
China – CMG
Croatia – HRT
Czech Republic – ČT
Denmark – DR, TV 2
Europe (except Russia and Belarus) – EBU, Warner Bros. Discovery
Estonia – ERR
Finland – Yle
France – France Télévisions
Germany – ARD, ZDF
Greece – ERT
Hungary – MTVA
Iceland – RÚV
Ireland – RTÉ
Israel – Sports Channel
Italy – RAI
Japan – Japan Consortium
Kosovo – RTK
Latvia – LTV
Lithuania – LRT
Macau – TDM
Montenegro – RTCG
Netherlands – NOS
North Korea – JTBC
Norway – NRK
Poland – TVP
Slovakia – RTVS
Slovenia – RTV
South Korea – JTBC
Spain – RTVE
Sweden – SVT
Switzerland – SRG SSR
Ukraine – Suspilne
United Kingdom – BBC
United States – NBCUniversal
On 16 January 2023, the IOC announced that it had renewed its European broadcast rights agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery Sports to last from 2026 through to 2032. The contract covers pay television and streaming rights to the Summer, Winter, and Youth Olympics on the Eurosport and Discovery+ channels in 49 European territories. Unlike the previous contract where corporate precursor Discovery, Inc. was responsible for sub-licensing them to broadcasters in each country, free-to-air rights packages were concurrently awarded to the European Broadcasting Union and its members to cover at least 100 hours of each Winter Olympics. In Italy, domestic rights are handled by the country's public broadcaster RAI and WBD's Italian division.
In the United States, NBC will again broadcast the event as part of its US$7.75 billion contract to air the Olympics through to 2032. Under the National Football League's new media rights agreements that begin in 2023, NBC will also serve as broadcaster of the Super Bowl (which is now rotated among all four of the United States' major commercial FTA networks) during Winter Olympic years that fall under the contract.
See also
Notes
References
External links
Milano–Cortina 2026
2026
Winter Olympics
2026 in multi-sport events
2026 in winter sports
Olympic Games in Italy
Winter Olympics
February 2026 sports events
Sports competitions in Milan
Sport in Cortina d'Ampezzo